Group I introns are widespread in archaea

Nucleic Acids Res. 2018 Sep 6;46(15):7970-7976. doi: 10.1093/nar/gky414.

Abstract

Group I catalytic introns have been found in bacterial, viral, organellar, and some eukaryotic genomes, but not in archaea. All known archaeal introns are bulge-helix-bulge (BHB) introns, with the exception of a few group II introns. It has been proposed that BHB introns arose from extinct group I intron ancestors, much like eukaryotic spliceosomal introns are thought to have descended from group II introns. However, group I introns have little sequence conservation, making them difficult to detect with standard sequence similarity searches. Taking advantage of recent improvements in a computational homology search method that accounts for both conserved sequence and RNA secondary structure, we have identified 39 group I introns in a wide range of archaeal phyla, including examples of group I introns and BHB introns in the same host gene.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Archaea / classification
  • Archaea / enzymology
  • Archaea / genetics*
  • Base Sequence
  • Introns / genetics*
  • Nucleic Acid Conformation
  • Phylogeny
  • RNA, Archaeal / chemistry
  • RNA, Archaeal / classification
  • RNA, Archaeal / genetics*
  • RNA, Catalytic / chemistry
  • RNA, Catalytic / classification
  • RNA, Catalytic / genetics*
  • Species Specificity

Substances

  • RNA, Archaeal
  • RNA, Catalytic